Canada COVID-19 Trend

Data Sources:

Data version: 2021-03-10

Canada COVID-19 case growth rate compared to other countries

When aligned by the first day since the 100th case in each country, the total confirmed case number of all the countries grow similarly except for a few: it follows a steep exponential growth at the early stage which is resulted from an unhampered epidemic spread, gradually slows down after various countermeasures are taken by the governments and eventually goes to flat when the situation is under control.

Countries that are successful in the early prevention and control, like Japan and Singapore, show a much shallower growth with time; South Korea experienced a rapid growth at the early stage but managed to flatten out the curve very quick by an aggressive 'trace, test and treat' strategy. However, recently, many countries has experienced a second wave of growth.

Canada case number grows slowly after a huge increase in Spring.

Exponential projection of Canada case growth and the impact of the countermeasures

Since Canada is still at the exponential growth period, an exponential projection provides a good short-term forecast. In the following chart, the next 5 day's case number is projected based on the exponential growth of the previous 5 day's actual case numbers. The different countermeasures taken by the government are timelined on the chart to monitor their impacts on the growth.

After reaching 1000 cases, the growth rate of Canada is actually not very different from the growth rate of many other countries when they had a similar number of cases. The plot below shows the growth curve of Canada vs US, Italy, Korean and China after other countries' dates are backshifted. The trajectories of those countries provide different scenaria on the long term case growth in Canada.

Projected case number in the next 5 days:

Date March 08 March 09 March 10 March 11 March 12 March 13 March 14 March 15
Actual 890,692 893,512 896,739
Projection 890,635 893,648 896,671 899,704 902,747 905,800 908,864 911,938
Daily Adds 3,037 2,820 3,227
Projected Adds 3,002 3,013 3,023 3,033 3,043 3,053 3,064 3,074

Canada daily case increase

COVID-19 cases by province

Long Term Outlook

Three scenarios from CIDRAP 2020